State GOP seeks to recapture lost voters

Former Senate Minority Leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga, left, places a campaign sticker on GOP Rep. Tom McClintock, at the California Republican Party convention in Sacramento, Calif., Saturday. Brulte is expected to be elected as the party's new chairman.

SACRAMENTO -- California Republicans gathered in the state capital Saturday to assess the state of their party and consider how to recapture voters amid deep losses last November and a widening disconnect with nearly all segments of the state's electorate.

To be successful in the long run, Republicans will need to reach a large segment of California voters who have largely turned away from the GOP. That includes younger voters and Latinos, who are the fastest-growing segment of the electorate and are expected to surpass whites in California next year.

A spinoff group called GROW Elect that aims to recruit and help Latino Republicans get elected to local office drew an overflow crowd of more than 100 to its convention gathering. Ruben Barrales, a former White House staffer who was named head of the group last month, said his advisers pointed out the need for the GOP to reach Latinos when Barrales ran for state controller in 1998.

"I feel as though a collective snooze button was hit and now we're waking up again," he said.

Former state lawmaker Jim Brulte, who is expected to be elected party chairman on Sunday, told the gathering that achieving a "Republican renaissance" will require electing "Republicans of all colors in every community at every level."

Republican strategist Karl Rove, the featured attraction on Saturday, emphasized that message during his address. He implored the party faithful to field more diverse candidates and reach out to non-white and women voters.

"It's not just the tactical things of a better turnout operation ... we've got a strategic issue," Rove told a ballroom full of delegates and party activists at a downtown hotel. "We have great principles, but we sometimes talk about those principles in a way that makes it sound like it's 1968, 1980 or 2000."

He said the party's losses give the GOP an opportunity to re-evaluate everything from the ground up. Republicans account for less than 30 percent of the state's voters, hold less than a third of state legislative seats and lost ground in the state's congressional delegation last fall.

But the GOP will need more than just a diverse slate of candidates. In 2010, the party fielded women candidates for governor, U.S. Senate and treasurer, a Hispanic for lieutenant governor and a black for secretary of state. All of them lost.

Ashley Neumann, 43, a delegate from the Sierra foothill town of Grass Valley, said she is looking for answers from the party about its failure to select good candidates and deliver a cohesive message. Neumann, who opposes abortion rights, said she counts that issue among her highest priorities but does not like the way Republicans have discussed it.

"I just don't trust any of the candidates that I've seen to be able to deliver a logic, science-based, pro-life message. So if they can't deliver it, please shut up," Neumann said.

There are no plans to revamp the party platform, which espouses opposition to gay marriage, abortion and universal health care, and the roster of speakers for the weekend reads like a list of establishment Republicans.

The party faithful are banking on Brulte to restore their party's luster and its bank account, but there are still wide divisions among members about whether the California GOP needs a total overhaul or a quick makeover.

The party's outgoing chairman, Tom Del Beccaro, acknowledged the split on some of the most contentious issues, such as gay marriage.

"The reality is that you're going to find that the Republican Party is going to have members on all sides of this issue for years to come," he said.

About 60 percent of California voters support gay marriage, 10 percentage points higher than when the initiative passed, according to a Field Poll released earlier this week.

Warren Kusumoto, the 53-year-old mayor of Los Alamitos, said he is optimistic about the party's future despite its missteps.

"Who would not want less government, less taxes and growth? Those are the things the party can connect on," rather than social issues, he said. "I'm not saying let's ignore all that, but let's focus on the core."

Latino support for Republicans has been on the decline since 1994, when Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, championed Proposition 187. That ballot initiative prohibited illegal immigrants from using public health care programs, education and a variety of social services. The law was later overturned by the courts but has left lingering resentment among Latinos.

The weekend gathering offers an opportunity for the internal party tensions to play out, including views that are out of sync with mainstream voters.

Celeste Greig, president of the California Republican Assembly, a conservative faction within the party, caused a stir on the second day of the convention for comments related to abortion and rape. She told a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News that pregnancy after rape was rare because of the trauma to a woman's body, similar to comments made last year by failed Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin.

Rep. Darrell Issa on Saturday also denounced comments by the president of the party's San Bernardino County women's group, who earlier this week called the San Francisco County GOP chairwoman, who is Sikh, a "Taj Mahal princess" in an online post. That posting also featured a photograph of an Islamic terrorist. The San Francisco party official, Harmeet Dhillon, is seeking to become the first woman to hold the state party's vice-chairmanship.

Fliers featuring similar criticisms of Dhillon, including one bearing the headline "Not all U.S. Immigrants are Patriotic," were displayed on tables outside the ballroom where Rove gave his luncheon address.